Jay Cantrell: Blog

Hi all,

I am extremely heartened by the positive response "Daze In The Valley" has received. Truly, I doubted it would garner as much of a following as it has (or at least the following I think it has given I had 80 e-mails waiting for me 7 hours after I posted the final chapters).

Many of the e-mails asked me what was next. In a rare occurrence, I actually know.

My next story was spawned from "Daze In The Valley." As I picked through potential plots for the group's feature film, I had two or three that I thought held promise but just wouldn't work for one reason or another.

I turned one of those rejected plots into my next offering, which should start (in serial form, of course) in the next six weeks or so. There are no dragons or wizards but I think it falls firmly into the action/adventure category.

Thankfully it is "only" about half the size of "Daze" so I should be able to get it all posted in less than 18 months this time. After that, I have several other stories that I work on from time to time.

One revolves around the general manager of a small-market baseball team. Another is a quasi-legal thriller. A third is another adventure story set in modern times.

I will strive diligently to answer the e-mails I have neglected. "Daze" generated almost 3,000 e-mails over the course of its run and I've become remiss in getting replies out. They reside in a folder waiting for me but I can never seem to grab enough time to go through them.

That happens all the time, I suppose. I don't want to send a "canned" response but I don't always have time to sit down and compose a response.

I guess I've always consoled myself by thinking that those who enjoy my work would rather I be writing my next piece instead of sending e-mail.

But it doesn't make it right that I haven't taken the time to say thanks to the readers.

So, I'll take the time now. If I haven't gotten back to you, I apologize.

The readers on SOL have offered (for the most part) the encouragement I've needed to break free from the "Just the facts, Ma'am," journalist style that littered my earlier works.

They have given me the freedom to think outside of my stilted worldview and create, I hope, some truly interesting, truly endearing characters -- characters I never would have attempted without the kind words of a multitude of readers.

The writer of an e-mail I read today said he would recognize Adam Walters if he were to sit down beside him in a bar.

That's high praise.

I hope my next story will live up to the standards "Daze In The Valley" has created.

Best wishes,
Jay C.

Hi all,

I've gotten a lot of e-mails about the impending conclusion of "Daze in the Valley." Most of them want the story to continue or to see if I plan to write a sequel.

It won't and I won't.

In fact, I'm not sure it can. I am a regular reader here on SOL. I enjoy reading the works of others as much as I do compiling my own stories.

That said, I've seen far too many stories keep going far after they should have ended. I have done my best to avoid repetition. In a story the length of "Daze," that's not easy. I have read dozens of stories where plot points are repeated by the same characters over and over again.

I tried to make each description of the character's lives, loves, trials and travails be different from something that was included earlier in the story. I've tried to make the "shoots" as unique as possible and have gone to great lengths to refrain from descriptive scenes that are too closely related to something else in the story.

Sometimes it has worked; other times it hasn't. But the effort was there.

There is nowhere for "Daze" to go without skipping literally years in the character's lives. I'm trying to do that in another story -- a sequel to "The Outsider" -- and it is not working out at all.

So the tale reaches it's proverbial climax as the group's signature motivation -- "Dragon Lore" -- wraps.

The last chapter is an epilogue that catches up to the characters a few months later, after the video is released, to close the couple of plot lines that still needed a resolution.

After that ... finis!

There will be no curtain call.

Regards,
Jay C.

Hi all,

"Daze In The Valley" was meant to be fiction -- at least most of it was meant to be fiction.

Still, in the time since I started to write it (2007) a great many portions have turned out to be prescient.

1) The file-sharing fiasco.

I wrote that section before the whole SOPA, PIPA, Megaupload fiasco. I'm a little disheartened at how our federal government has taken it upon themselves to police the Internet. It is frightening to me to consider that a bunch of 60-year-old, tight-assed old men with one hand on their secretaries' asses and the other in the pockets of their benefactors has the power to stall a huge segment of online activity. That is just my personal opinion, by the way, so don't send the FBI to my house with a no-knock warrant because I have an illegal copy of the latest "Harry Potter" movie.

I do believe, as I wrote, that copyrights are worthless in the digital age. The dinosaurs in D.C. seem intent upon protecting the profits of the multi-millionaires in L.A., who are crying poor and threatening to lay off the lowest-paid employees they have in what can only be described as a temper tantrum.

Still, the movie industry has enough money to pay some essentially worthless actor or actress $35 million to film a picture; the television industry routinely pays its actors and actress $250,000 per 23- or 44-minute episode; the literary industry can afford a $3 million advance to a writer who hasn't had a unique story since the 1980s. Perhaps the Occupy Wall Street gang should move over to Rockefeller Center and head out to Hollywood. Oh, that's right: they're looking at a different segment of the "1 percent." They all land in the same boat, if you ask me (which you didn't).

2) The non-agency and educated starlet.
Again, when I started the story, it was almost unheard of for an actress to work for long without an agency (or a suitcase pimp) to represent her. Now it is coming more and more prominent. Some of the biggest young stars are going without representation, preferring to make and schedule their own bookings. I hope this is a wave of the future because, from what I've read, one of the biggest factors in shortening the careers of female performers is the agent assigned to her. There also appears to have been an influx of better-educated talent -- or they have a great P.R. machine working for them -- if the posts on some of the chat sites are any indication. That portends well for the future, too.

3) The fall of AIM (or AMS in my story) and the rise of condoms.
In summer 2011, AIM mistakenly identified (apparently publicly) a performer they thought to be HIV positive. It turned out to be a false-positive but the damage was done. The industry called for restrictions on what AIM could do and I read last month that mandatory condom usage in the adult industry has been been proposed and passed a first reading in Los Angeles City Council. Studios and performers have already said they will move the industry from the city. Other U.S. cities are already lining up for the influx of cash that would come from moving the adult industry outside of Los Angeles (and completely ignoring the rash of problems that it will bring with it).

4) Softening the product (no pun intended)
In the past year and half, many web sites have purposefully moved away from the Gonzo element of porn. Sites such as X-Art and Only Blowjob took the lead. Now places like New Sensations have launched a series of "Romance" porn films and even compilation web sites have added one or two sites that feature less ass-slapping and choking and more sexual content like the rest of the world seems to participate in.

5) The non-nude model brigade.
When I wrote the section about Rita Looker and Cassie Charms moving from "modeling" to adult entertainment, it was pure fiction. I searched and searched to find someone who had "taken the plunge." Now there are more than a dozen starlets who started in "non-nude" modeling and have worked their way up to hardcore. Most prominent among them is Lily LaBeau. They are bringing a ready-made set of fans with them. Sadly, Lily LaBeau does not appear to have taken advantage of that fact (or she enjoys the harder-edged portion of pornography, because she certainly doesn't shy away from it).

So, it seems my time was wasted in writing "Daze In The Valley." I should have sent the story to Porn Valley and perhaps I could have reaped some of the benefits of the changes and been seen as a "soothsayer" for the next big wave to hit porn.

Oh well, at least I can still steal things from a few of the file-hosting sites for another week or two.

Alas,
Jay C.

No, I'm not writing about the Mayan calendar. Well, at least I don't think I am. With me, you never know for sure.

Instead, I'm referencing the final dozen chapters of "Daze In The Valley," that today I put into their final form for posting.

Yes, although I'm sure to some it looked as though it might run forever, it's almost done.

I could have gone for the "What The Fuck?" ending, given them all HIV and pissed off a lot of readers who've stuck with the story from the outset. I wouldn't do that, now would I? (Insert any name you wish to call me at this point if you remember that god-awful story I wrote several years ago called "Double Play.")

No, I wouldn't do that. For one thing, I spent far too long to close the story like that. In fact, when the final chapters go up (tentatively scheduled for Monday, Feb. 20) I will have spent just short of five years on this story. It was June 2007 when I wrote the first sentence of a story called, at the time, "Untitled Porn Story." (Clever, huh?)

Not surprisingly, that first sentence, "Alan had never considered how unsexy sex could be." appears nowhere in the finished story. In fact, neither does Alan. Those of you who have been following along for the past 18 months know him as Adam.

I grew to like Adam. I grew to like all the main characters. In fact, I liked them all so much I couldn't decide which girl Adam should wind up with. Allie was originally supposed to be a villainess, sent to disrupt the burgeoning relationship between Adam and Sarah. But I liked her so she became a heroine.

Then Rebecca was supposed to be the one to create havoc. Then I started to like her, too. Next up came Anya and then Lucy. But, hell, I liked them, as well.

Shelly was supposed to disappear midway through but, you guessed it, I liked her, too.

My original outline had the story running about 200 Word pages in the standard style I use for writing (about the size of my other stories). By the time I was finished it clocked in at 1,672.

That doesn't count the 60 or so pages of notes I took about the adult industry. It doesn't count the notes I'd jot down about each scene to make sure I kept the characters straight. It doesn't count the cast list or physical descriptions. All told, I have about 1,800 pages of "Daze In The Valley."

And it took up 5 years of my life. I wrote other stories during the frequent breaks I took from the characters. "The Hillside," "Finding Shelter" and my next story -- which still is under it's working title -- were all written while I battled with "Daze."

I'll be a little saddened to see it end -- no, probably not. It was fun to write but it's not so much fun to edit and post. That's almost like work. Perhaps if I were a better writer, it wouldn't be so difficult to get a story into shape to put online.

To say the story wouldn't have turned out as well as it has without BlackIrish, ZoltanTheDuck and Lee would be the understatement of the year. Although I credit Zoltan and Lee with proofreading, they both added commentary that made me take a hard look at the way some of the scenes played out or would be perceived. Their help was immeasurable.

Then there is BlackIrish. From the very beginning, he made me ponder the direction of the story. He pointed out loose ends and unresolved situations. He found logic flaws and continuity problems.

In short, he did everything a professional editor would do without receiving a single bit of compensation save for my thanks.

Well, to those three fine individuals, I will offer it again here publicly.

Thank you for all the hard work you put into "Daze In The Valley." It was an absolute joy to work with you.

I offer my sincerest hope that the readers who have enjoyed "Daze" will take a moment to reflect on the thousands of individuals (and the countless thousands of hours they donate) who write the stories, who edit the stories and who moderate the site.

Then offer up a silent thanks for all their efforts.

And to the thousands of readers who downloaded the story (and appeared to have enjoyed it), I offer my thanks to you.

Best wishes,
Jay C.